Though it's flawed for other reasons which I'll get to later, the very first scene dramatizes the theme directly: it's a flash-forward in which the villain, Davian (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) has captured the protagonist, Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) and his fiance Julia (played by Michelle Monaghan) and threatens to kill her if Ethan doesn't give him what he wants. This is the ultimate manifestation of the tension inherent in the theme, and it's a completely appropriate level to raise the stakes to in a story of this nature.
The second scene, a family gathering celebrating Ethan's and Julia's upcoming marriage, also explores this theme. It shows what he stands to gain: not only a loving, compatible wife (we're told she's something of a thrill-seeker) but also a brother, a sister, parents, maybe even a whole extended family — and someday soon, it's strongly suggested, children. Because Ethan's own parents are dead and because he has no other family of his own, his relationship with Julia is of paramount importance: it's literally his only shot at having a family. This scene also underlines the thematic conflict, because Ethan has to lie to Julia's friends and relatives about what he does for a living. Even though his emotional stakes are higher than most people's, virtually all members of the audience can relate to this.
Directly thereafter, Ethan gets a call from his immediate superior at the IMF, kicking the other side of the narrative into gear. (This happens shortly after the seven-minute mark, presumably well within the first ten pages of the script given the rule of thumb that script pages average out to a minute of screen time each.)
Further dramatizing the theme, Ethan has to make up an excuse to leave the party and meet his boss, Musgrave (played by Billy Crudup), and when they do meet, Musgrave bemoans the fact that he couldn't attend the party and meet Ethan's new family. In other words, the incompatibility between Ethan's work and his family is so profound that the two must never be allowed to come in contact with each other, and that conflict forced Ethan to lie to get away from one to deal with the other.
Musgrave states that "family is everything," but he clearly doesn't really believe this, as he expects Ethan to set aside family obligations for professional duties and head off on a mission. This unstable state of affairs obviously cannot continue indefinitely. The conflict jointly inherent in the theme and the plot will eventually have to be resolved. Because it crystallizes Ethan's dilemma so clearly, this sequence is in many ways an excellent piece of screenwriting, one of the high points of the film.
The conflict between family and work is further dramatized when Ethan's mission fails and he returns home demoralized. He can't talk about his problems with Julia, so she only picks up on the fact that something is wrong, and she begins to fear that there might be a problem with their relationship. Already, the ongoing thematic tension in the story is placing significant stress on their impending union.
At the 48-minute mark, Ethan's colleague Luther (played by Ving Rhames) tells Ethan that a normal relationship (i.e. the type that Ethan is trying to have with Julia) simply isn't viable for people like them. As he must at this stage of the narrative, Ethan disagrees. (The thematic and plot conflicts must resolve together at the end of the story to form a strong and effective narrative.) This conversation does a good job of sharpening and clarifying the terms of the theme.
In another scene, Musgrave's boss, Brassel (played by Laurence Fishburne) states that ordinarily, the IMF would have let Ethan's former student Lindsey Farris (played by Keri Russell) die when she was captured by Davian. The IMF also treats Ethan very badly when agents capture him, binding and gagging him as though he were practically Hannibal Lector. Both touches dramatically demonstrate the conflict between work and family that Ethan (or indeed any IMF agent) must face. After all, if this is how the IMF treats its own "family," how much worse will it treat families it's not a part of?
Later, after Davian has kidnapped his fiance, Ethan finally chooses family over work once and for all by deciding to steal the rabbit's foot (the macguffin of the film) and give it to Davian in order to ransom Julia. (This occurs at about the hour twenty mark.) His decision is the beginning of the resolution of the story's conflicts, and it is thematically necessary. Drama is generated by conflict, and conflict is formed of choices — both choices made and choices postponed in a vain attempt to escape them. Ethan has been trying to avoid truly making a choice between work and family, and now at last the consequences of his avoidance have grown so dire that he has to face the conflict head on, because Julia's very life is in danger.
Now that Julia has been sucked into Ethan's professional world and all the dangers it involves, and now that she realizes Ethan has been lying to her about his job, the dynamic between them obviously has to change. A "normal" relationship, or rather the illusion of one, is no longer an option. Either they'll have to break up or they'll have to form a new type of relationship. The twist of Julia having to fight off the turncoat Musgrave and one of his henchmen while Ethan is clinically dead near the end of the story is excellent. It resolves the work-vs-family conflict by establishing that Julia can survive in Ethan's perilous work environment, that he doesn't need to protect her from it by keeping the two spheres of his life separate. This resolution is cemented by a later scene showing her with Ethan at IMF headquarters, talking and joking with his colleagues and wearing an IMF badge — she's now a member of his professional family just as he is already a member of her regular one.
Plainly, parts of M:I 3 do an excellent job of dramatizing deep thematic and emotional conflicts despite its supposed status as a "mindless blockbuster". This is how good screenwriting of any kind works: by finding plot-based manifestations of all the relevant aspects of the thematic conflict and using them to advance the story. But what are some of the film's thematic failings that stood in the way of greater audience response and box office performance? Read on to find out.
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